Saturday, June 2, 2012

Nationwide Series From Dover on ESPN

Ryan Truex is on the pole as the Nationwide Series gets ready to race on ESPN from the Dover International Speedway. The weather is good, the track is fast and the field is deep.

ESPN has Rusty Wallace in the TV booth as Dale Jarrett is off this weekend. He will be joined by Allen Bestwick and Andy Petree for the race. The Infield Pit Studio returns with Nicole Briscoe and Brad Daugherty. You just never know who might be a guest on the pre-race show.

Dover is a place where it is tough to get pit reports in except under yellow. The action happens so fast that it is also almost impossible to zoom tight on one or two cars. In the past, using the in-car cameras live meant missing key passes and incidents.

In terms of restarts, keep an eye on the information that Bestwick tries to relay when the network comes back from commercial. There will be lots to update. Depending on the flow of the race, it is tough to integrate the Infield Pit Studio once the racing gets underway unless there is a long yellow.

Dover has two bridges across the track and the TV challenge is to cut around them for the entire race. That is what makes using the aerial shots so tough to do. Viewers should also notice the orange traffic cones stuck in the catch-fence as markers for breaking points as the track has no lines for reference.

There are a number of start and park teams in the race as well as unsponsored cars. It will be interesting to keep an eye on just how many depart prior to the first pit stop.

This post will serve to host your opinions on the ESPN telecast of the NNS race from Dover. We will also be live tweeting the race on Twitter. Looking forward to your comments.

Really interesting to watch the S and P teams. The 46 and 47 immediately followed the 08 to the garage. The 10 of Lepage raced out of the garage with the windownet down, parked in his teammates pit for a crewman to put up the windownet and came back out to run 2 caution laps, gain 3 points, and back to the garage. The 42 and 71 is also behind the wall now

The racing on the track is pretty much single file. The garage is a crowded parking lot with the 10, 74, 71, 75, and 47 with their hoods up and NASCAR officials looking with crew members. The 42 and 15 traveled back to their haulers, the 08 team just pushed the damaged car back to the hauler

Scott Speed brought the 47 down pit road literally to stop and go, having a brief convo to the one person in his pit stall.

Pretty awful coverage unless you're a fan of the mega-team folks. Cuz generally, that's all you got to see. As for the rest...proof that if you throw enough money at a car, a toddler can probably drive it to the front. Can't speak as to how much ESPN may or may not be getting paid behind the scenes to continually ignore 30+ cars for entire races.

"Anonymous said... Pretty awful coverage unless you're a fan of the mega-team folks. Cuz generally, that's all you got to see. As for the rest...proof that if you throw enough money at a car, a toddler can probably drive it to the front. Can't speak as to how much ESPN may or may not be getting paid behind the scenes to continually ignore 30+ cars for entire races.

I,too was a little surprised how Andy and Rusty quickly assigned blame today in a number of incidents without seeing all the tapes. Truex and Joey were racing to the finish and two lapped cars were racing each other side by side with the leaders bearing down on them. Anyone notice Ty Dillon's performance today? I think this was his first NNS race. He qualified I believe P3 in front of his brother and finished in the top 10. Danica qualified mid-pack, went a lap down at the one-third point in the race before wrecking out. She'd raced here before,but Eury Jr lobbied to have her be given rookie status Friday which gets you an extra set of tires. Nevertheless, the booth continued to make excuses for her dismal performance. I thought there was a lot of racing throughout the field.